Free Cold Blood by James Fleming

their bedtime prayers, the flowers in their little gardens—God, how I love this horrible country of ours.”
    I knew the score from my efforts to get Elizaveta to leave. Boltikov would be the same. There’d be tears as big as summer raindrops, howling, tantrums and such emotional self-mutilation that the situation could be rectified only by the 1825 cognac and the slippery lips of
liebchen
.
    â€œYou’ll never leave,” I said.
    He took out a huge English handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.
    I could see Liselotte watching us suspiciously, afraid that her employer was getting into some typically Russian entanglement that would prevent their departure.
    He and I embraced. She made room for him and he climbed back in. The shuvver closed the door on him. The car rolled away on its fat tyres. After twenty yards it halted. The back door flew open. Hanging on to the strap with one hand, he called out, “I’ll get what you want and cable you. At the Rykov Palace? Think it’ll get through?”
    I waved him my thanks. The huge car vanished, exhaust pipe fluttering.
    Turning, I found the entire episode had been witnessed by the night porter standing in the shadow of his own door. It shocked me that he should have remained silent throughout. He said, No, he wasn’t a Bolshevik spy: he was more interested in the dead than the living.

Twelve

    I FOLLOWED him into his lodge to sign the register.
    â€œPychkin—Razumsky—Rykov—here we are,
barin.
” He inked the pen and passed it to me. But the nib being new and still in its anti-rust dressing would leave only a watery trail. He handed me a newspaper on which I scribbled until the nib worked. It was farewell: it was important that everything was right.
    All our family visits were recorded, nearly a century of them. From December 1821, a month after the Founder’s death, to last December when my cousin Nicholas had signed in with his two spoilt brats.
    I filled in the columns: 3.45 a.m., Friday October 26th, 1917. Number in party—“one.” In the section for Comments, I wrote: “The night of the Bolshevik uprising (Lenin). The evening started damp and foggy. Shortly after midnight the sky cleared. A bad sign.”
    On reading this over my shoulder, the porter said, “Our soldiers’ll soon chase him out. I’d be joining them if it wasn’t for my leg.” He took the key to the Rykov mausoleum off the hook and dusted it in a pannikin of graphite; clipped on a long metal tag so that I wouldn’t forget to bring it back.
    â€œIt’s something having your own burial chamber,” he said, leaning comfortably against the counter. “The upstarts come and say, This is a fine outlook over the city for when I’m gone, how do I buy a plot? I say, The last one we sold was in 1881, so you don’t. They don’t like that. Upstarts don’t like being buried in the suburbs.”
    He remembered Uncle Igor’s visits well. I said that I myselfhad been in charge of sending up what remained of him after the bomb blast.
    â€œMany more Rykovs to come, are there, sir? Is yours a fecund family, if I may enter the enquiry? You see, sir, I like to keep track of our noble families. In fact, I’m thinking of writing a little book about my years here.”
    I told him of Nicholas’s death at the Pink House. The last I’d heard of his sons they’d gone to Paris with their mother. “That’s it,” I concluded.
    â€œYou’re the end of them in Russia, sir?”
    â€œThe very end. Full stop.”
    â€œNo children anywhere, sir?”
    â€œNo. My son Daniel is also dead.”
    â€œWhat date was—”
    I turned on him. His sallow quizzy face swam up to me out of a mist. I grabbed at his coat and pulled him close.
    â€œHe was never born. He never got that far, the poor little bugger, on account of the teachings of Mr Lenin, who has just taken control